


These Colors We Bleed

by Tousled_Sky



Category: Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Genre: Disowning, F/F, Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Marriage, Same-Sex Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-18 01:14:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14842772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tousled_Sky/pseuds/Tousled_Sky
Summary: Ennis and Jack deserve a soft epilogue. They don't get it here.But two others do.Jenny and Ennis centric.





	These Colors We Bleed

It’s mid-November and the Canadian air is absolutely frigid.

Ennis wishes he’d fixed the heater as he curses under his breath; a puff of steam that quickly dissipates before his face. In the seat next to him, Jenny shivers in her coat, but despite the cold, her grin is wide and her eyes wild. She swings her legs back and forth as he drives, obviously nervous despite her glee.

The kicks of her legs make her wedding dress puff up like snowdrifts growing through the night.

Ennis pulls into the parking lot of the small chapel, next to the blue car that he recognizes from his driveway a month ago, when Jenny had ran out of the passenger side door and up to the door of his trailer, desperately banging on the door, sobbing so hard that she couldn’t even speak to him when he had wrenched the door open.

Ennis gets out of the car, watching Jenny hop out of her own door, looking all for the world in her dress like Cinderella stepping out of the carriage. He smiles, remembering reading her that very fairy tale as a little girl. She had always wistfully sighed, _“I hope I grow up to be like Cinderella”._

What an irony, that here she is, 20 years later. Walking through the swirling snow in a dress just as white as the flakes, not only her papa’s princess but a princess of her own accord; strong and beautiful.

He takes long strides to open the door for her, and she smiles at him, happiness and nerves making her face a strange display as they step into the church.

\---

The marriage ceremony is quiet.

That’s to be expected – there’s hardly anyone there. Alma’s marriage had been an affair – she had both her momma and her daddy there, as well as Kurt’s whole family. It had been a crowded ceremony with a festive reception afterwards.

But for Jenny, the only family she’s got at her wedding is Ennis.

When the music starts, Ennis offers his arm to Jenny, who lays her hand on it as they start down the aisle together. He moves off to the side as she moves up onto the alter, to stand beside the priest as he starts off the ceremony with an enthusiastic, “Dearly Beloved, we gather here today…”

The ceremony is as short as it is quiet. Too soon, it’s over. Ennis watches as Jenny’s veil is lifted over her head.

“You may kiss the bride. Or, er, brides.”

Both women giggle as Jenny leans in to kiss Anna, and that’s that, they’re married. Bound by the law in this cold Canadian chapel.

As beautiful as the moment is, it’s bittersweet.

\---

_Ennis jerks awake out of sleep, hearing the pounding at his door. His first thought is to reach for his revolver; that whoever’s on the other side of that door means him harm._

_He’s groping around under the mattress for the cold metal cylinder when he finally makes sense of the noise on the other side of the door. Along with the pounding on the door are sobs, and mixed in with them, words spoken in a desperate, feminine voice. A familiar voice._

_Jenny._

_He yanks his empty hand back from under the mattress, stumbling to the door and pulling it open so suddenly that Jenny stumbles forward, nearly falling straight on her face on the floor._

_“Jenny?” Ennis asks, the shock in his voice completely reasonable – because what on Earth is his daughter doing here, so very many miles from where she lives with her mama, in the middle of the damn night?_

_Jenny just looks up at him, the surprise on her face from stumbling melting away, face falling back to grief as she throws herself into his arms, bawling again. Absolutely stunned, there’s nothing he can do but cautiously hug her back. He rubs her back in small circles – something he hasn’t done since she was six years old and skinned her knee falling off the swing, sobbing on the dusty ground over the little patch of torn skin._

_She’s talking through the sobs, but nothing he can really make heads or tails of. Only one word sticks out – Anna._

_“Jenny, sweetheart, I can’t understand you unless you calm down. What’s going on?”_

_“A-Anna-“ Jenny gets out before her voice chokes off in another cry._

_“Who’s Anna?” Ennis questions._

_“That’s me, sir.” A tired voice calls from the dim yard. Ennis startles, jerking his head up to see another woman there, standing by the car’s driver door. With his eyes now adjusting to the dim light, Ennis can see that she’s not crying, but her eyes are puffy like she’d been crying recently. Her entire stance is stiff, but exhausted at the same time._

_In short, she looks like hell._

_“Anna. I’m Ennis.” He grunts sharply. “Can you maybe tell me why my little girl is here in the middle of the night, crying her eyes out?”_

_Anna sighs wearily, dragging a hand through her hair._

_“We been through hell ‘n back this past night, Mister.”_

\---

“Oh, Daddy, I almost forgot to tell you! The pictures from the wedding came in!” Jenny exclaims, pushing herself up from the couch and hurrying out of the room.

On the couch across from him, Anna chuckles softly, smiling at him over the steaming coffee in her hands. “You know, she loves having you here, Ennis. I haven’t seen her this chatty in months.”

Ennis doesn’t know what to answer to that. He just murmurs a “thanks” before busying himself with his coffee.

A few moments later, Jenny skips back in with the envelope. She sits back down next to Ennis on the couch, flipping the envelope open and spreading the pictures over the coffee table. Ennis looks at the pictures with Jenny, and listens as she excitedly and vocally reminisces on the moments behind each one, but in truth, he isn’t terribly interested.

That is, until one in particular catches his eye.

Anna and Jenny, cradling each other’s faces in their hands as they kiss. Something about it is familiar, but he can’t quite place it – until, he realizes with a jolt, that’s how Jack liked to kiss him. With his hands cupping his face.

A ding from the other room has Anna rising. “That’s dinner.” She remarks. “I’ll go set the kitchen table, and you two be in as soon as you’re done with those photos, you hear?”

“Thanks, darling.” Jenny calls after her wife. She turns to Ennis with another picture but stops mid-sentence when she sees his face. “Daddy? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, sweetheart. I was just…thinking.”

“Thinkin’ bout’ what?” Jenny asks softly.

Ennis hesitates. Almost tells her that it’s nothing, but something in her tone of voice reminds him. Reminds him that his daughter takes after him in more ways than just having his eyes. That she might be the only one he knows that would understand; hell, the only one who would even _listen_.

But she’s the daughter, and he’s the papa – he’s supposed to be strong, to not burden his child with his grief. So he doesn’t mention Jack, and instead just explains, “Thinking…well, about if I couldn’t have had a marriage like you and Anna have. Me and your momma didn’t fit as well as you two do.”

“But you and Jack did.” Jenny says softly from next to him. Ennis jerks his head over to look at her, shocked.

“How did you-“

“Momma told me.” Jenny says quietly, somberly. “Or yelled it at me, I guess is more like it, when I came home with Anna that night. Back when I was a little girl, I remember seeing Jack coming around sometimes, when you two would go on trips up to the mountain.” She raises her eyes, and her gaze is sad as she meets Ennis’s. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Yes.” Ennis’s voice is rough as he speaks, thinking back to the jacket with the stained sleeve in his wardrobe. “Yes, he is. Me and him-” he stops himself, sighs. “I wish your Momma hadn’t told you. I never wanted you or Alma to know.”

“Daddy.” Jenny says, tone making him look at her, meet her eyes. “When Momma was yelling at me, she told me that Anna was the next Jack. She told me I was just like you.” Ennis feels a surge of anger at that, but then Jenny’s gripping his arm, forcing his attention, her voice a rush.

“She meant it to be mean, but I think that’s the nicest thing I can remember her ever sayin’ to me. You’re one of the best people I know, Daddy. I’m proud to be like you. You’re the only one who didn’t cast me out. That whole family done cast me out, except for you. You don’t love me for who I love, you love me for who I am.”

She hugs him, voice rough as she speaks in his ear.

“I’m so sorry, Daddy. I’m so sorry about Jack.”

Ennis feels his features twist, and he’s glad his little girl’s face is over his shoulder. That way, she can’t see his expression in grief, the tears tracking down his face. His voice betrays his sadness, though, thick and rough when he answers.

“I miss him, baby girl.”

They stay there a few more minutes, embracing each other, both with their own grief – loss of family and loss of love. They’re quiet, not saying anything more.

There’s nothing more _to_ say.

\---

Ennis takes the jeans out of his backpack, the ones he’d taken with him on the trip up to Toronto. He tosses them in the hamper, on top of all the other clothes he’d had in his backpack – he’d have to drive into town tomorrow for a visit to the laundromat. He goes to slide the backpack back under the bed, where he usually keeps it, but his eye catches one last item in the bottom of the bag.

He reaches in and pulls out a small white envelope that he’d forgotten all about – the extra pictures of the wedding that Jenny’d had printed for him. He flips it open, tugging out the first picture with some trouble, the back of it catching on the glossy front of the one behind it.

He looks down at it to see Jenny and Anna kissing one another, hands cradling each other’s faces. The same picture that had reminded him of Jack and himself.

He flips through some of the other pictures as well, not quite interested in them – he’s seen it all before, after all, he was there when it happened. After a few minutes, he slides the rest of the pictures back into the envelope, but not the first one he’d taken – that one he keeps in his hand.

He opens the wardrobe and sets the envelope up on the top shelf of it. His eyes linger on it up there for a moment, before they flick down to the jacket in the wardrobe that he never washes, never wears.

His eyes linger on the worn denim, the pale buttons, the bloodstain that’s brown against the blue fabric. He reaches down to take the sleeve of the jacket, but stops right before his fingers touch it. He just can’t do it. He can’t hold the empty, cold fabric and remember how it used to feel when Jack, warm and happy and alive, was beneath the denim that wasn’t stained with his blood.

He hasn’t touched it since he hung it up.

Ennis looks at the jacket for a few seconds more before he takes the picture of Anna and Jenny and slides it in the breast pocket of Jack’s shirt. Right over where his heart used to beat. It’s sadly symbolic; the picture-perfect life that Jack would have loved for them so much, right over his heart.

But only now that he’s gone.

That’s the life Ennis’s little girl had now, but the life that he could never have. Not anymore.

Not without Jack.

Ennis brushes fingers over the photo one last time, not touching the denim. Then he swings the cabinet door closed, and the jacket and picture both fade away into the shadows as it shuts.


End file.
